Former Cork orphanage site sale set for 18 luxury family homes

Positive prospects promised at Passage West's Mount Prospect period home and grounds

CGI of Mount Prospect, with original period home on right and FPP for 18 detached houses on 6.8 acres. Agent Michael Powell seeks €2.5m for the development opportunity

THE historic Cork harbour Mount Prospect house, for years an industrial school and orphanage, may anchor a development of 18 luxury, detached family homes, likely to be worth up to and over €1m apiece, according to the vendors of a ready-to-go hillside site in Passage West.

At the heart of the site just put back up for sale is the Victorian-era Mount Prospect, built 170 years ago for William Brown, co-founder of the Passage dockyard/ Royal Victoria Dockyard in 1849 at a time when Passage West was the busiest anchorage in Cork harbour, generating enormous mercantile wealth, and housing and villa grandeur.

CGI of Mount Prospect previously Mount St Joseph (currently boarded up and in need of renovation.)

William Brown’s brother, Henry, built the adjacent Marmullane House: architect linked to both Mount Prospect and Marmullane was the acclaimed Sir Thomas Deane, with Sir Thomas and Kearns Deane also responsible for high profile Horsehead House by the water, built 15 years earlier in a very similar ornate gothic/Tudoresque style.

Horsehead House (now fully restored) has very similar design features 

Mount Prospect changed hands several times, with an industrial school built beside it in the 1870s, rising to hold up to 80 impoverished and orphaned boys, with some girls admitted in the 1960s.

The 18 new builds designed by Wilson Architecture are in a straight line south of the main period house

The Sisters of Mercy acquired Mount Prospect in 1923 as numbers grew, renaming it Mount St Joseph, but it only opened as a residential centre in 1932.

In 1999, the religious order withdrew from child care at Mount St Joseph/Mount Prospect and it was taken over by the Southern Healthy Board, later the HSE.

The HSE offered it for sale in 2019 (via Lisney) with a €750,000 AMV, but the sale only closed post-covid for just over the AMV, with the price register showing the original house (with later rear wing) on one acre valued at €450,000.

Having secured full planning permission for the development of the former Mount St Joseph property and grounds from An Bord Pleanála in June, Parson Developments Ltd are seeking to sell the 6.8 acre site including the substantial c 10,000 sq ft 1850s Tudor revival Mount Prospect, along with FPP for 18 contemporary detached homes of 2,080 sq ft up to 2,710 sq ft on wooded grounds, with views over Cork’s inner harbour from its Passage West perch.

After extensive tree surveys, bat and other ecological surveys plus historical reports on the period dwelling and curtilage, it’s offered for sale via estate agent Michael Powell of Powell Property for Parson Developments (of which he is a minority investor). It has an all-in price tag of €2.5m to include the original house with exceptional ornate internal detail but needing extensive restoration and conservation, or less €262,500 if the house is excluded from the sale and separately acquired.

Sizes of the four-bed detacheds range from 2,080 sq ft to 2,700 sq ft

Suggesting the target market for the finished four-bed A-rated homes would be professionals working in the harbour area and the pharma sector on this “premium plot,” Mr Powell compares the quality of the wooded and water-aspected development site to the likes of Monkstown Demesne and Brookwood, Crosshaven, where one-off homes are valued in the €1m and multi-million euro league.

Design team includes Peter Heffernan of Wilson Architects; Design Forum as Conservation Architects (inc Oisin Creagh); Keystone Planning Consultants’ Damien O’Mahony, and Jim Kelly of Cunnane Stratton Reynolds, layout/landscaping. It features extensive green and communal areas, winding paths and internal drives: the planning allows for the temporary part-removal and reinstatement of Mount Prospect’s original limestone gatepiers and wrought iron gates in a slightly wider entrance on the town’s Back Road.

Views from the grounds through retained mature trees (inc Cedar of Lebanon) span sections of Passage West town, passing marine traffic, Marino Point and the Cobh rail line, and Cork’s inner harbour up towards Lough Mahon — the sort of prospect that encouraged the prosperous original owner William Brown to site his villa on this village hillside.

Target buyers are builders/developers with a track record in high-end low-density housing on sensitive city and county sites, inc previous convent/religious order/period home grounds developments, harbour related schemes etc. Vendor Parson Developments Ltd has directors listed as Vivian Nathan (secretary), Valerie Kiernan, Michael Powell and Redmond O’Hanlon.

As well as the 18 detacheds with good floor plans (one has a former stone coachouse on its site, suitable as home office/gym etc), and the substantial mid 19th century ornate mansion, there may be scope outlined for up to five other sites for houses of up to 3,500 sq ft, subject to a further planning application, said Mr Powell.

DETAILS: Powell Property 021-4279727, powellproperty.ie